The Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee unanimously approved a bill Wednesday to provide medical care for Marines — and, in certain circumstances, their families — who served on Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in North Carolina and were exposed to contaminated water there.

The bill by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the ranking Republican on the committee, would provide $600 million over 10 years for the medical care.

“This is long overdue, but we are working in partnership with the secretary of the Navy, the Marine Corps commandant and with the current military compliment at Camp Lejeune to try and expedite, not just the health needs, but also the studies,” Burr told POLITICO after the vote.

Burr said the cost of the legislation, approved on a voice vote, is being found from within the Department of Defense. A committee aide said the offset pertains to the overhead costs associated with running Post Exchanges and Commissaries (grocery and clothing stores located on base).

Over a period of 30 years — 1957 to 1987 — there were two water treatment facilities at Camp Lejeune that were contaminated with volatile organic compounds, the HHS Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found. The contaminants were perchloroethylene from an off-base cleaning service and trichloroethylene that came from a variety of other sources including on-base leaking storage tanks, industrial spills and waste disposal sites.

HHS and the Department of Veterans Affairs are conducting studies of the Marines, and other service members, who served on the base to determine whether they are suffering any health effects from the water contamination. Among the illnesses that veterans and their families have suffered, committee aides said, were spina bifida, anencephaly, cleft lip, cleft palate, childhood leukemia and non-Hodgkins lymphoma, among others.

Under the deal cut by Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) DoD will foot the bill of the legislation and the VA will provide the care for the treatment for any veteran who served on the base for any reason. Dependents of those veterans, however, must prove a “causal relationship” with the illness they suffer from and the water contamination, according to the bill. HHS officials have been studying the problem since 2005 to determine who has been harmed by the contamination.

“I personally have listened to the witnesses on this and I feel very strongly that this is not something that the country should just turn away from,” Murray said. Murray said she has been working on this legislation for some time, and she needed to play the part of referee.

“There was a division between the VA and the DoD, fighting with each other and I said ‘No more of that,’” Murray said.

The next step is a full Senate vote and Murray said she is working on gathering the votes.

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) a former Marine Corps officer and secretary of the Navy, said more work may need to be done. “I think DoD needs to look at it. I think the Armed Services Committee needs to look at it,” he said.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 4:11 p.m. on June 29, 2011.